Wait for the barkeep to retire and sell the bar. Go in on his last day offering to pay. Drink heavily with him. Stumble home with a couple hundred dollar tab still hanging above the register and quite a few mementos from days gone by. That's how I finally did it. RIP Mr. LPK.

How in the world are these monetary statistics 'determined'. The article basically sites other articles for these numbers. I fail to see how they determine that whatever costs incurred were directly related to alcohol beyond a shadow of a doubt.

A 2012 CDC study estimated about 38 million U.S. adults, or about one in six people, are binge drinkers, with a reported average of four episodes per month. This is the important part. I'd hit that average only by drinking during football season.

Pants_Optional:A 2012 CDC study estimated about 38 million U.S. adults, or about one in six people, are binge drinkers, with a reported average of four episodes per month. This is the important part. I'd hit that average only by drinking during football season.

It doesn't say how they define a binge drinker and that pisses me off. I probably do that once a month if that, and I wouldn't consider myself a binge drinker.

I've not had a drink in 5 years and I support Alcohol Prohibition until it's decided that the war on drugs needs to end, what's good for the goose and all that. Let's see how happy everyone is when SWAT kicks in your door for a 12 pack of Schlitz and sentences you to 25 - life.

It'd be so divine to see that happen to all the hypocrites of the world.

The state that absorbed the least alcohol costs was North Dakota, coming in at $420 million. The most costs were found in California, totaling nearly $32 billion.The researchers broke down the numbers even further and found based on population, the District of Columbia has the highest per-person cost associated with excessive drinking ($1,662 per person) while Iowa had the lowest ($622).

Wow! They divided the total by the population for EACH state. You would need access to something like Excel to do that. Pretty high-tech stuff.

They are ignoring all the profit made off drinkers, and all the taxes governments gouge out of people for buying alcohol. Subtract that from the "cost" they're crowing about to get a better grip on reality.

Pants_Optional:A 2012 CDC study estimated about 38 million U.S. adults, or about one in six people, are binge drinkers, with a reported average of four episodes per month. This is the important part. I'd hit that average only by drinking during football season.

FTA: "Across all states, excessive drinking costs due to productivity losses (such as missed work) ranged from 61 percent in Wyoming to 82 percent in the District of Columbia. The share of costs due to added health care expenses ranged from 8 percent in Texas to 16 percent in Vermont."

Hell yes! Texans miss the least amount of work due to excess drinking! This is either because we git our assess to work even with a nasty hangover or because the quality of the work we do sober is not that much better than being dwunk at work.

/ Texas is also near the top of the list of the number of miles driven drunk per driver... because we have long roads!

bingethinker:They are ignoring all the profit made off drinkers, and all the taxes governments gouge out of people for buying alcohol. Subtract that from the "cost" they're crowing about to get a better grip on reality.

But but but it wouldn't be as dramatic if they did that. Same deal with the "cost" of smoking you see in studies.

bingethinker:They are ignoring all the profit made off drinkers, and all the taxes governments gouge out of people for buying alcohol. Subtract that from the "cost" they're crowing about to get a better grip on reality.

No only that but it may be quite a bit cheaper to die of cirrhosis and lung cancer at age 67 than to wait for multi-organ failure at 94.

Supposedly, you're binge drinking any time you get your BAC over .08, e.g. five drinks in two hours for an average man, or four for an average woman. That's the standard proposed by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NAMBLA).

SDRR:Pants_Optional: A 2012 CDC study estimated about 38 million U.S. adults, or about one in six people, are binge drinkers, with a reported average of four episodes per month. This is the important part. I'd hit that average only by drinking during football season.

And then hockey starts to get good...

Play offs around my house are known as "Daddy comes to bed stumbling around midnight"

I love that they start talking about the health problems associated with alcohol and throw out that huge number and then in a somewhat roundabout way tell you that $171 Billion of that cost is the cost of the booze when binge drinking.

funzyr:MrBallou: "Binge drinking -- defined as when men drink more than five drinks and women drink more than four drinks in two hours"

or what Farkers consider "a light lunch".

You have a point. I had 9 beers in about 2.5 hours the other day just because my family was out and I had the place all to myself.

Seriously. People talk about having beer for breakfast like it's a bad thing. Studies show that people who skip breakfast tend to be more overweight than those who don't and less healthy in general. QED.

Being part French, I feel your pain over the ravages of alcohol. I mock it pitilessly, but I feel it. The French are like that. If you fall on your head, they'll laugh and laugh and help you up, dust your coat and send you to the hospital for high quality, low cost government-insured medical care. But they will have their laugh first.

I admit it. I saw a drunk slipping on ice once and he fell on his head (not in a cartoony up and down way, more of an inverted V like the caret symbol). I had to laugh. I had to wait to see if he got up again also. The ice was terrible, the street sloped, I didn't want to get close to him for my safety's sake, but I did wait to see if he would be moving along all right. That's the French spirit: always ready for a good laugh at somebody else's expense, but willing to be a Good Catholic afterwards, even if not Catholic or Good.

Despite the ravages of alcoholism on individuals, families and societies, you're real amateurs when it comes to alcoholism. Too many teetotalitarians, as James Joyce put it. And too many young people who drink like savages (in binges, for the sake of getting drunk fast). Not dedicated professionals like the Russians, or Good Amateurs like the Germans, or even Half-Assed Wannabees like the British or Australians. Just good old-fashioned quasi-puritanical American amateurs. You worry about your health too much to be fully-qualified alcoholics.

The French may have more liver damage, but it isn't because they don't know how to drink. They just don't know how to stop. May have something with how they drive, come to think of it.

I admire a drunk who can hold his liquor. A gentle, quiet drunk who some how manages to make it home before throwing up or falling down. I've only seen a few of these, but they exist. They are the gentlemen of the drinking classes, because when you drink, it's just your inhibitions that go, not your sense of right and wrong. To behave like a gentlemen when you are drunk, you have only to be a gentleman. Not a wild dog in a cage, but a gentleman to the bone. The kind of civilized person who is still civilized when falling down drunk. A saint, some might say.

As I said already, I have met a very few, bless 'em.

All in all you're on the right path provided you eventually get the balance right and wander neither to the right nor the left. What's a couple of hundred billion dollars, after all? The damages are cheaper than the booze!

kindms:MrBallou: "Binge drinking -- defined as when men drink more than five drinks and women drink more than four drinks in two hours"

or what Farkers consider "a light lunch".

1 drink every 20 or 30 minutes is binge drinking ?

I thought the 1 drink every 1/2 hour or so was responsible drinking.

The military standard is moving toward the Air Force standard, which is no more than one drink per hour, no more than three drinks per day. Also known as WTP drinking (what's the point?). Your liver metabolizes one drink per hour, more or less, so anything above one an hour after the first two is pushing you into DUI/binge territory.